Beastie Boys To the 5 Boroughs (Capitol)
These are some things that have changed since the Beastie Boys' last studio album, Hello Nasty, was released in 1998: There is no Grand Royal Records; the trio shut down its eccentric custom label in 2001. Adam "MCA" Yauch's deep, rough growl is now an even deeper, stranger weapon of taunt; he now fires boasts and insults like a hip-hop Tom Waits, in a smoker's-cough harangue scoured free of melody.
And there is no World Trade Center. This may seem like a weird time -- wartime, everywhere you look -- for Yauch, Adam "AdRock" Horovitz and Michael "Mike D" Diamond, all on the cusp of forty, to make a record that in its gibes and hyperspeed is the closest they have come to their old-school fight and comedy on 1986's Licensed to Ill. Actually, it is the perfect time. To the 5 Boroughs is an exciting, astonishing balancing act: fast, funny and sobering. "I bring the shit that's beyond bizarre," Horovitz asserts against the quick hop and spears of sampled brass in "Ch-Check It Out." "Like Miss Piggy," he adds, apropos of nothing, to which all three respond in idiot falsetto, "Who moi?" In "Right Right Now Now," the Beasties lament Columbine and call for "more gun controlling" over tense rolls of Muzak harpsichord, then twist the chorus of their biggest hit into a free-speech cheer, retrieving Public Enemy's inversion from 1988: "We're gonna party for the right to fight." The Beasties pour the Pink Champale and Riunite here, but they're not drinking to forget. They turn the dis on "a president we didn't elect" in "It Takes Time to Build": "Is the U.S. gonna keep breaking necks/ Maybe it's time that we impeach Tex."
It's risky business -- odd, at first, to hear social protest in Horovitz's cutting nyah-nyah-nyah or, in "All Lifestyles," Diamond's high, shrill yelp: "Walking down the block, you say, 'Yo, D! When you coming out with the new CD that spreads love in society?'" But To the 5 Boroughs is a full-service gas. The Beasties produced the album themselves, spiking stark, muscular beats with incongruous cool, like the Brazilian rain-forest buzz of the berimbau in "Hey Fuck You." You also get an encyclopedic torrent of cheesy-TV citations, as if the Beasties have spent the last six years sucking up nothing but Nick at Nite. And two decades after turning from hardcore punk to homeboy jollies, the Beasties are still the best rap band in the biz -- three voices swinging like a jazz trio, racing like Bad Brains -- and they don't have big patience for the gold-plated phooey currently passing for gangsta. "I know you're sitting pretty in the Hampty-Hamps/Posing like you're rolling with the camp," Yauch croaks in "Shazam!" That photo of P. Diddy on a jet ski, in his polar-bear beach robe, comes to mind.
More than anything, To the 5 Boroughs is the Beasties' valentine to the city where they, and rap, were born. It is a brash, passionate toast to what we lost on 9/11 (in the cover illustration, the Twin Towers are still standing) and what survives: in memory, on the ground. The raps are packed with local cuisine (Blimpies, Murray's Cheese Shop on Bleecker Street) and nostalgia (Yauch: "Used to ride the D to beat the morning bell at Edward R. Murrow [High School] out on Avenue L"). And in "An Open Letter to NYC," the Beasties celebrate the city "that blends and mends and tests," mixing prayer and pride with sampled shots of 50 Cent, RZA and Nas over the killer riff from the Dead Boys' "Sonic Reducer." It's a dark whirl, but never maudlin: "2 towers down but you're still in the game," Diamond crows, a line that also has everything to do with the state and fate of the nation. The Beasties are New York from head to heel, but they've made To the 5 Boroughs for the Bronx, Brooklyn, Queens, Manhattan and Staten Island in all of us. (DAVID FRICKE)
Phish Undermind (Atlantic)
For their twelfth and last studio album, Phish team up with the most fitting producer they've ever used: Tchad Blake, whose talent for bringing just the right unorthodox textures to roots-rock artists has yielded breakthrough works such as Los Lobos' Kiko and Sheryl Crow's second album, Sheryl Crow. On Undermind, Blake encourages Phish to do what they do best (experiment) and fine-tunes their worst tendencies (weak songwriting and instrumental overkill). The band delivers the most commanding song of its sixteen-year recording career, "The Connection." With its blast of ringing guitars, a hummable country-rock melody and Trey Anastasio's earthy vocals and surprisingly focused lyrics, the song evokes "Box of Rain," one of the stronger tunes by Phish's most obvious influence, the Grateful Dead.
But Undermind is no vintage American Beauty. Unlike the Dead's famous folk-rock album -- or even Billy Breathes, Phish's other studio high point -- Undermind is giddily adventurous. The album's fourteen tracks run from the simple, stripped-down psychedelia of the opening "Scents and Subtle Sounds" to the joyous rock of "Crowd Control"; from the dense, fuzzy feedback of "Maggie's Revenge" to the nearly translucent symphonic pop of "Secret Smile." Even Phish's whimsical side doesn't come off as so annoying: Blake musses up the bumbling "Access Me" with gritty electronic touches and skittering beats, and he submerges the awkward lyric clutter of "Nothing" beneath the song's sweet, catchy melody. If Phish really are going out this time, they're going out in style. (MARK KEMP)
Patti Scialfa 23rd Street Lullaby (Columbia)
Patti Scialfa's 1993 debut, Rumble Doll, defied listeners' expectations so outrageously that it ended up being unjustly ignored. On that record, far from coming on like Mrs. Bruce, Scialfa sounded like Ronnie Spector performing songs written by Sylvia Plath. Among other subjects, Scialfa struggled with her role as the tabloid-lashed other woman in Springsteen's first marriage, torn between the urgency of her love and the hard reality of "that ring around your finger."
Those tough choices are deep in the past on 23rd Street Lullaby, a sweeter, more confident effort. Scialfa is again examining her past, but now from the vantage of a woman who has gotten much of what she wanted and wonders if all of life's intensity is behind her. To answer those questions, she revisits Manhattan's Chelsea neighborhood, where, just out of college, she got her start as a singer-songwriter. "Now there's a river of faces," she sings. "In the tide of rise and fall/Do they wonder where we've gone?/Do they think of us at all?" The song's title, "You Can't Go Back," provides the unsentimental answer.
With co-producer Steve Jordan (Keith Richards, Jon Spencer), Scialfa assembles a smart group of players, including guitarists Nils Lofgren and Marc Ribot, cellist Jane Scarpantoni and violinist-singer Soozie Tyrell, with Jordan on drums and Springsteen "here and there." The result is sophisticated pop that frames Scialfa as a jaunty, East Coast version of Rickie Lee Jones or Bonnie Raitt. In its cleareyed joyfulness and unpretentious appeal, 23rd Street Lullaby evokes a woman not haunted by her past but enriched by it. "And a light fell from heaven with a promise/That all lost things are someday found," she sings in "State of Grace." Even in a world where nothing comes without a price, it's possible to get everything you paid for, and more. (ANTHONY DECURTIS)
The Killers Hot Fuss (Island)
Don't be fooled by their retro threads and the the in their name: The Killers threaten to pry dance rock from the steely grip of hipsterdom and thrust it unrepentantly into the mainstream. The Rapture are artier, and Franz Ferdinand are more, well, Scottish, but this Las Vegas band has actual pop songs -- in spades. A nightclub anthem in the making, the acid-tongued "Somebody Told Me" blasts into outer space on a wave of synthesizers and singer Brandon Flowers' cheeky chorus: "Somebody told me you had a boyfriend/Who looked like a girlfriend/That I had in February of last year." "Jenny Was a Friend of Mine" comes on like classic Duran Duran, all snaking bass lines and Flowers' elegantly wasted vocals -- part ironic detachment, part fake-British-accent, part throat-shredding wail. This album is all Killers, no filler. (JENNY ELISCU)
Dave Alvin Ashgrove (Yep Roc)
It's been six years since Alvin's last album of original material, and from the sound of Ashgrove, they've been long and tough ones. Reaching back for a past that doesn't exist, dying parents, dead-end lives, the anchorlessness of life on the road, the stop-the-clock fear of aging -- those themes are all over this album, delivered by Alvin's twixt-a-husk-'n'-a-croak voice. In places, it sounds rather like a rootsier Bruce Springsteen, in one of the Boss's more downbeat moods. Middle-aged rockers addressing middle-aged themes can be an honorable pursuit, but there's a resigned despondency that can make an entire album of such material a burdensome listen. Alvin does at least execute his laments with more grittiness than many of the storytelling country, folk and heartland rock musicians mining similar territory, taking a satisfying blink-and-you'll miss it swipe at organized religion in the best song, "Everett Ruess." (RICHIE UNTERBERGER)
J.J. Cale To Tulsa and Back (Sanctuary)
J.J. Cale's chooglin' blues and stinging Stratocaster has inspired musicians for more than three decades. Eric Clapton and Lynyrd Skynyrd turned his songs into chart-topping rock classics, he's been covered by legends such as Johnny Cash, and Widespread Panic introduced him to a generation of jam fans. Through it all, the Tulsa native rarely deviated from his trademark laidback groove, but on his first album since 1996's Guitar Man, Cale's singing and string-bending don't take center stage. His weathered voice is like a trail of cigarette smoke, often eclipsed by the prominent horn and keyboard arrangements. But Cale still delivers his messages loud and clear, bemoaning diminishing water resources on the deep bluesy "Stone River" (a song he wrote for the environmental legal defense fund EarthJustice that appeared on 1999's Fish-Tree-Water-Blues compilation), railing against George Bush on the mandolin-dotted "The Problem" ("The man in charge has got to go") and observing the tragedy of the "Homeless" ("I'm not a homeless man/I'm a gypsy") -- and that's when he's at his soulful best. (MEREDITH OCHS)
Antibalas Afrobeat Orchestra Who is This America (Ropeadope)
Brooklyn's Antibalas ("bulletproof" in Spanish) is a seventeen-member collective of guitarists, horn section and four percussionists, taking inspiration from Nigerian Afro-Beat godfather Fela Abikulapo Kuti. As with 2001's partially live and jammy Liberation Afrobeat, soloing is required, but this time when horns or keyboard break from the pack they fly more purposefully. Throughout, rhythm guitar, insistent percussion and horns build dense foundations for tunes that roll for eleven minutes plus. "Who is this America Dem Speak of Today" kicks off with a boilerplate Kuti groove ranging into jazz, funk and Latin with international street festival flair. And here, Antibalas' politics are more than an undercurrent. "Indictment," with its squawky and repetitive minimal funk lyrically summons Rumsfeld, Rice, Ashcroft and Bush to justice. Antibalas have earned a rep as a must-see live, but Who is This America indicates the band's expert revivalism has broad appeal for those in need of conscious grooves for an election-year summer. (JOHN DUGAN)
Chris Stamey Travels in the South (Yep Roc)
Chris Stamey's been working the producer's side of the studio glass (Whiskeytown, Ben Folds, Squirrel Nut Zippers) for so long that practically an entire generation's come of age unaware of his recorded legacy. This founding member of the Sneakers and dB's, two against-the-grain power pop bands from the Seventies and Eighties, still has plenty of inner melody deserving to be heard on his first solo album in twelve years. Stamey's accompanied by an all-star cast -- former Jayhawks keyboardist Jen Gunderman, Superchunk drummer Jon Wurster, Ryan Adams and producer Don Dixon -- who crank it out on a grand scale similar to that of the E Street Band. The opening cuts "14 Shades of Green" and "Kierkegaard" ring forth with a Spectorian wall of guitar, keyboards and harmony vocals. However, Stamey's nasal southern drawl is best preserved with spare arrangements, as the lonely pedal steel of "Insomnia" hauntingly points up. (ROB O'CONNOR)
Communique Poison Arrows (Lookout)
Oakland's Communique may play synthed-out retro-pop, full of keyboard wails and tight harmonies, but they remain, at heart, a rock band. On their full-length debut, Poison Arrows, the quartet expands on the blinding, blistery music found on its startling EP, A Crescent Honeymoon. Here, though, the songs dance a bit more, as jams like "Perfect Weapon" and "Oija Me" shake with body-moving, catchy, almost disco-like grooves. The mighty opener "The Best Lies" and the thrilling racer "Dagger Vision" boast head-nodding, sweeping choruses. The band packs armfuls of big, youthful energy into the set, as each song rips fiercer than the last. Even so, frontman and main songwriter Rory Henderson doesn't exactly tell party-friendly stories. On "Black Curses" -- and throughout -- he offers images of an outcast, "I'm bleeding down my chin, biting on my lip." Communique's music is poignant and charged, rock for the underdog. (BENJAMIN FRIEDLAND)
Br. Danielson Brother: Son (Secretly Canadian)
Those familiar with previous albums by the Danielson Famile already know where leader Daniel C. Smith is coming from: His music exhorts Christ-like behavior in songs with high strung acoustic guitars and even higher strung vocals. Smith races through collision-course arrangements of dueling banjos and guitars, careening trombones, multi-tracked vocal choirs and drunkenly whimsical drums. But beneath the hilarity lies a unique thought process. Part acoustic prog, part bluegrass meltdown, Brother: Son offers a Danielson-and-daughter duet on "Daughters Will Tune You," singing "Your King comes to you on a donkey so shout and be glad." Hypnotic vocal rounds adorn madly plucked banjos on "Sweet Sweeps," and Smith sings about "construction humor" in "Hammers Sitting Still." The faithful will rejoice in Smith's sweetly distinctive proselytizing. (KEN MICALLEF)
De-Lovely: Music From the Motion Picture (Columbia/Sony Music Soundtrax)
Robbie Williams is perfect for this Cole Porter biopic soundtrack: He was born to sing the words of America's wittiest-ever songwriter. Alanis Morissette and Sheryl Crow clearly weren't, but they handle Porter's melodies well enough; and Mick Hucknall nails his tune with an appropriate theatricality. (BARRY WALTERS)